Al Qaeda over the past 15 years have been actively attempting to create or buy a nuclear device in any way they can. A US official said they are monitoring extremely carefully and says they are making little to no progress because of the enormous difficulty of making a nuclear device. Al Qaeda has been trying to buy nuclear materials perhaps to fashion into a "dirty" bomb which is a combination of traditional explosives and nuclear materials. The danger involved if Al Qaeda were ever to possess a nuke would be absolutely catastrophic and US forces are carefully monitoring to try and know if they make any progress.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/04/13/nuclear.terrorists/index.html?hpt=T2
The article I read seemed relatively calm about this and that definitely threw me off as this seems like huge news and incredibly troublesome. I can only imagine it's because of their lack of success that this isn't a much higher priority but this still comes as quite a shock even though I should have suspected Al Qaeda of this sort of terrorist action. Apparently there has even been 18 robberies or losses of the 2 key ingredients of nuclear bombs which is just absolutely preposterous that you can "lose" or have someone steal something so incredibly dangerous. I'm definitely hoping that the US can figure out some way to shut down this attempt at making nuclear bombs as the cost of not acting could be far greater than anyone could imagine.
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They can certainly be lauded for being ambitious, taking out two towers and now hoping to get their hands on a couple nukes. They would be able to acquire weapons of mass destruction more easily if they looked to create biological weapons instead. Then they would be far more dangerous.
I hope that the possibility of these materials becoming WMD ready are very slim. I'm guessing the technology for such weapons are very expensive, and I'm sure its hard to find such materials on the open market easily. I'm pretty confident America will keep a watch on such materials in order to keep them out of the hands of people such as Al-Queda. As for the people losing materials, its a scary thought that they aren't being guarded securely enough. I'm going to trust my governments security measures in this case. Hope it doesn't screw me over.
i some what dissagree with derek because it is my own personal belief that the whole scare about WMD's is just something set up by our gov during the bush administration to give the US a right to invade and move around freely. But i do belive that they could obtain other weapons that aren't nuclear but still very distructive. the reason i believe this is b/c the raw materials to construct a weapon of such are very hard to obtain and very expensive to make.
I agree with Derek here. While it is still a very good idea to do all that we can to stop Al Qaeda from getting nuclear materials, it would not be the end of the world.
Raw nuclear materials take years and years to turn into nuclear weapons. Furthermore, they take huge facilities to enrich the uranium. Look at Iran. They tried to secretly refine uranium. They were not able to do it without drawing the attention of the entire international community. If Iran, with all of its resources, cannot manage to build a hidden uranium refinery, somehow I doubt Al Qaeda can.
I agree with all of you guys. I am very terrified of nuclear weapons! It would not be cool if a nuclear weapon hit me in the near future.... Even if they are having trouble finding this ingrediedents and even if the success of them creating a weapon is near none, i want there to be no possibility. It would definitely help me sleep better every single night!
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